Use the PowerPoint app to start this year with a new, fresh coat of creativity. What’s your blank canvas?

12615394_10156528508640370_3206738728968493426_o

Use the PowerPoint app to start this year with a new, fresh coat of creativity. What’s your blank canvas?

Try Office 365 to get the new Office 2016 apps!

Office-365-30-day-trial

Police department uses Office 365 to make faster decisions and better serve the community

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

Police department uses Office 365 to make faster decisions and better serve the community

The Richland Police Department wanted to streamline its flow of information so that officers could spend less time filing reports and more time serving the community. It also sought to encourage collaboration among department staff for faster decision making. The department adopted Microsoft Office 365, which officers use to connect with colleagues and file reports from the field, gain access to real-time information to help protect the public, and work as a team to develop strategies and keep the community safe.

Protect and serve

Resolving disputes, responding to burglary reports, helping community groups—it’s all in a day’s work for members of the Richland Police Department (Richland PD). The department’s officers and staff must work together to safeguard citizens and visitors, handing off cases from shift to shift and alerting each other to trends that threaten public safety. “Communities have high expectations of their police officers,” says Sergeant Darryl Judge, Field Operations/Bomb Squad at the Richland Police Department. “In our line of work, we need to be as well informed as possible to do our jobs best.”
While Richland PD has always promoted teamwork, certain conditions made it challenging. Officers handwrote notes on the scene, then had to return to the station to transfer them into memos, emails, and other electronic formats. “It was a redundant business practice that took up valuable time,” says Judge. “We shared the obvious high-stakes information, but the details necessary to connect the dots in a case could still be in an officer’s notebook.” Even after the notes were converted, the department still couldn’t fully share valuable information across its employee base, which often slowed the decision-making process.
Traveling back to the station to file reports and access data also meant that officers were increasingly at their desks, not out in the community. “We looked for a better way to share information so that officers could spend more time in the field and be more effective,” says Tony Striefel, Lieutenant CCIP, Professional Standards and Technology Division at the Richland Police Department.

Knowledge sharing with compliance

In 2012, the department adopted SmartForce law enforcement software, a solution developed by Adventos Consulting and built on Microsoft SharePoint technology. “SmartForce provided the form tracking and controls we wanted, but we wanted to do more,” says Striefel. “For example, if we were working on a series of auto thefts, our analyst team would need access to officers’ reports, and the delays involved meant we could wait weeks instead of just a day or two for the team’s final analyses.”
Richland PD decided to augment its environment with a technology solution that would support department-wide collaboration and mobility. Finding the right solution involved more than just identifying the best functionality to suit users’ preferences; the department also needed its solution to meet stringent government requirements about data protection. Richland PD considered several conferencing products and analytics tools, but of those, Microsoft Office 365 was the only solution that complied with Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) requirements. “We’re taking our security and compliance to a whole new level with Office 365—one we certainly couldn’t have reached on our own,” says Striefel.
The department worked with Microsoft FastTrack for strategic planning and implementation assistance. “We received phenomenal service from members of the FastTrack team,” says Striefel. “We expected to deploy Office 365 over several months, but they helped us finish in just a few weeks.”
In addition to Windows Phones, lieutenants and command staff use Microsoft Surface devices, and field officers use rugged laptops that run Office 365 and the Windows 8 operating system. Employees also rely on Office 365 ProPlus and Click-to-Run to keep Office software current. “We allow employees to install Office 365 ProPlus on their home devices, too,” says Striefel. “It’s extremely helpful to have access to documentation from everywhere, because crime doesn’t stop when your shift does, and decisions can be made more quickly when everyone stays up-to-speed.”

Increased teamwork and responsiveness

The department’s biggest improvement since the adoption of Office 365 is its success in breaking down the silos typically found in police organizations. “It’s so much easier now to find the people in our organization who have deep knowledge, such as traffic cops who have years of experience with a particular location,” says Striefel. “We can use Skype for Business Online to see who’s available and get valuable opinions and consensus. We also use SharePoint Online to access officer reports, crime bulletins, and other documents without waiting. We’re taking advantage of avenues that we just didn’t have before to streamline our activities.”
“In fact, our culture is shifting,” continues Striefel. “We’re all communicating more—officers and others are sharing documents and getting more creative and frequent with their teamwork. Instead of one problem getting tackled by just one person, multiple people can now help evaluate and resolve issues because it’s easier to collaborate. As a result, we’re improving both the speed and quality of our responses to incidents.”
Today, every team in the department, from traffic safety to detectives, has its own SharePoint Online site to collaborate and store the most current information. Team members store finalized documents such as training plans and crime bulletins in Microsoft OneDrive for Business for anywhere access. And officers use this information to be more effective in their police work. For example, they may pull up photos of a suspect taken from surveillance video to instantly compare the visual depiction on their phone or laptop with the person in view to see if it’s a match.
The level of detail within team documents has also increased now that officers and others use SharePoint Online to share and review files across the department. Plus, having an accessible place for information has been helpful in connecting officers who rarely see each other. “Now that we can contribute to sites from wherever we are, whether we’re on shift or not, we can take advantage of the collective knowledge of the group to solve cases together as quickly as possible,” says Judge.

Real-time collaboration for better situational awareness

In law enforcement, gaining a complete understanding of a situation is critical to safety, and Richland PD now uses Skype for Business Online to help keep everyone abreast of current conditions. Field officers use video calls to present the scene to those in command at the station so that they can determine the appropriate level of support based on the seriousness of the situation. For example, Sergeant Judge went to help a neighboring district during a protest demonstration and used Skype Meetings to screen share so that his commander and certain specialists could see the demonstration. “I’ve also shared images of bombs I’m dealing with straight from the field,” says Judge. “With capabilities like these, we get better collective decision making, and we better prepare officers headed to a scene by giving them complete information and the right resources.”

Faster decision making

Speed to decision is critical in law enforcement. “With Office 365, we have a number of ways to get synthesized information out to officers in the field,” says Striefel. “Wading through forms took a lot of time, but our analysts now transfer data into data sets in Microsoft Power BI. We analyze data and share results more rapidly, which ultimately means smarter, faster decision making and the ability to put crime-solving strategies into place more quickly.”
Once Richland PD identifies a pattern, the department forms a project group and assigns tasks to help address it. Previously, those groups met physically three to four times a week. Now, they establish a SharePoint Online site to share all project-related information and use the built-in dashboard for real-time data tracking. They also establish a Yammer enterprise social network group for the informal collaboration that used to take place in person. “As a result of using the integrated Office 365 services, we’ve adapted our crime-solving processes and can respond faster to serve our citizens,” says Striefel.

Transparency and increased community engagement

Richland PD can better communicate with the greater community, reaching out quickly and engaging those outside the department with transparency, especially when responding to complaints. For example, a field officer can use her mobile device to instantly pull up a dashboard about ticket-related complaints or community accolades while in conversation with a community member. She also can see who’s on duty in a specific area and instantly connect that officer with a neighborhood resident who approached her with a question or issue.
“The more the department embraces Office 365, the more information officers have available to us from wherever we happen to be,” says Judge. “Staying visible and available out in the field has a positive impact on community members and supports our mission far better than working in the station.”

Smarter resource allocation and cost savings

Since adopting Office 365, Richland PD is making better use of taxpayer dollars because it has greater insight into its costs. “We can understand more clearly how crimes affect the community and our budget and take appropriate steps,” says Striefel. “For instance, if we see burglaries increase, we can anticipate the amount of overtime salaries and detective time we’ll need right then. And we also can reallocate resources in the coming months’ budgets to avoid running into problems while still maintaining top priorities.”
Striefels continues, “Plus, we’ll save resources in the form of officer time, because we’re able to be so much more efficient. We’re allocating six officers’ time better—over several years, that equates to better use of about [US]$500,000. That’s a huge benefit for public safety in our region.”
Read customer success stories to learn how Managed Solution helps businesses implement technology productivity solutions.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Smarter address book and flight confirmations coming to Outlook on the web

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

You send and receive a lot of emails, and it’s natural to make mistakes along the way—you forget how to spell someone’s name, leave someone out of a group email or forget to add a flight to your calendar. We’re bringing new people and calendar features to Outlook on the web to help you avoid these common mistakes and get things done faster. These changes are coming to Office 365 users beginning in a few weeks.

Outlook on the web learns from you

Do you spend extra time trying to add the right recipients to your email? Ever struggle to find someone because of the spelling of their name—is it John or Jon? Have you ever sent an email only to realize that you forgot to add someone? Outlook now helps you avoid these problems.
First, Outlook will save you time when choosing recipients. Just place your cursor in the To: or Cc: line and Outlook will bring up suggested contacts in a drop-down list based on your usage. These are the people you’re most likely to email based on who you’ve been communicating with recently and most frequently.
Suggested contacts learns from you to make reaching the right people easier.
Outlook has long had a spell checker for the body of an email, but what about common variations on the spellings of names? Outlook can help. Outlook will now show you names of people you email most frequently—even if you spell their name wrong. For example, if you occasionally write to “Kathryn,” her name will appear as a suggestion even if you typed “Catherine.”
Finally, forgetting to include people in an email is common. Now, Outlook has help for that too. If you frequently send emails to the same set of people—say, Steve, Anna and Bob—then whenever you email only Steve and Anna together, we’ll ask, “Do you also want to include Bob?” This prompt will not get in your way and will only show when Outlook is highly confident you want to add Bob.

Flying somewhere? Let Outlook make sure it’s in your calendar

Have you ever struggled to find your flight information because you forgot to copy/paste it into your calendar? Moving forward, Outlook will take care of this for you. When you receive a flight confirmation via email from a supported provider, Outlook will gather key information and automatically add it in your calendar—no extra clicks, no copy/paste, no drag and drop.
In addition, Outlook will block out the time of your flight and show the flight number, destination and airport. You will receive an automatic reminder three hours before your flight that includes the original email in the calendar event, so you have all the details handy.
Outlook will automatically add a calendar event for flights detailed in an email.
To find “Events from email” in Outlook on the web, click the Settings icon (gear icon), Options and then Calendar. It’s on by default, but you can turn it off if you want.
Great, you say, but what about other types of events? We like the way you think! That is why we won’t stop with just flights. In addition to supporting more providers, future Outlook updates will support event types beyond flights.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Mobility, Collaboration and Networking for Construction Companies

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]construction

Microsoft Office 365 is more than just Word and Excel – Mobility, Collaboration and Networking

Everyone knows that Microsoft Office is the gold standard when it comes to office productivity suites. Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook have been mainstays in the business world for decades. What many don’t know is that Microsoft has been quietly transforming Office into a powerful tool for our increasingly mobile-first, cloud-first world. This has resulted in an ecosystem of applications built around the core products that are changing the way that businesses operate and interact with their customers.
Construction companies are starting to take advantage of these powerful new features offered by Microsoft Office 365. Looking beyond the core applications of Word and Excel, this new version of Office has much to offer the construction industry. Let’s look at some of the more popular applications and how they’re being used by companies in your space:

Skype for Business

Virtual meetings are now a common practice in office environments, with meetings between offices, clients and partners taking place in front screens regardless of distance or time constraints. Mobile devices equipped with Skype for Business make it possible for construction companies that have crews on jobsites and project managers back in the office to quickly and efficiently coordinate virtual meetings out in the field. McClone Construction is providing all of its employees with Skype for Business on their phones, tablets and laptops to promote more personal and precise communication between employees. See how McClone is becoming a more mobile, agile and connected construction company.>>>

Project Online

Microsoft Project has long been a favorite of project managers everywhere. Now that Project is available in the cloud, team members, project managers and executives can collaborate quickly and from virtually anywhere to keep projects running smoothly, on time and on budget. Construction solutions firm Hilti Corporation uses Project Online to coordinate projects in its offices in over 20 countries spread out over 6 continents, talk about collaboration! Best of all, because Project Online is in the cloud, scaling up can be done quickly and cost effectively. See why Hilti feels Project Online meets nearly 100% of its project management needs.>>>

Yammer

Social isn’t just for personal communication any longer. Businesses are starting to see that there are huge productivity gains to be had by keeping employees social in the workplace. Yammer is a new private social network that helps employees and teams stay connected. Whether it’s collaborating on files and organizing around projects or simply starting conversations and keeping in touch, Yammer allows your people to stay connected anytime, anywhere. Shopping center operator Westfield Group uses Yammer to allow its people to share best practices across company functions and geographies. Everything from employee training, cross-center communication and keeping the global team abreast of real-time happenings is handled on Yammer. Watch a short video below on how Yammer is helping Westfield improve the management and operations of all their properties.

Westfield: Empowering an Enterprise from Yammer on Vimeo.

Sway

With Sway, employees have the ability to create and share powerful interactive presentations, reports, electronic newsletters and more. In just minutes, users can add their content and Sway will quickly and easily deliver a polished presentation or report. Best of all, one can use all manner of rich content - photos, videos, maps, diagrams, audio files and music - to create interactive and immersive experiences. Sway is an intelligent app that will suggest images, web links, and social mentions based on your content without the need to have multiple apps running. From a productivity perspective, Sway is fully mobile and integrated with Office 365 workflows allowing your employees to use Sway on the go, in the filed. Businesses are changing the way they communicate using Sway.

Contact Managed Solution to Learn How Cutting Edge Technology is Shaping the Building Universe of Tomorrow - 877-226-8761

[/vc_column_text][vc_raw_js]JTNDJTIxLS0lNUJpZiUyMGx0ZSUyMElFJTIwOCU1RCUzRSUwQSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMGNoYXJzZXQlM0QlMjJ1dGYtOCUyMiUyMHR5cGUlM0QlMjJ0ZXh0JTJGamF2YXNjcmlwdCUyMiUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMiUyRiUyRmpzLmhzZm9ybXMubmV0JTJGZm9ybXMlMkZ2Mi1sZWdhY3kuanMlMjIlM0UlM0MlMkZzY3JpcHQlM0UlMEElM0MlMjElNUJlbmRpZiU1RC0tJTNFJTBBJTNDc2NyaXB0JTIwY2hhcnNldCUzRCUyMnV0Zi04JTIyJTIwdHlwZSUzRCUyMnRleHQlMkZqYXZhc2NyaXB0JTIyJTIwc3JjJTNEJTIyJTJGJTJGanMuaHNmb3Jtcy5uZXQlMkZmb3JtcyUyRnYyLmpzJTIyJTNFJTNDJTJGc2NyaXB0JTNFJTBBJTNDc2NyaXB0JTNFJTBBJTIwJTIwaGJzcHQuZm9ybXMuY3JlYXRlJTI4JTdCJTBBJTA5cG9ydGFsSWQlM0ElMjAlMjIzNzg1ODY5JTIyJTJDJTBBJTA5Zm9ybUlkJTNBJTIwJTIyNTc4NjFiZjMtZTIxNS00OTQyLWJhOTgtZDRiZTRkM2E4MzVmJTIyJTJDJTBBJTA5Y3NzJTNBJTIwJTIyJTIyJTBBJTdEJTI5JTNCJTBBJTNDJTJGc2NyaXB0JTNF[/vc_raw_js][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Whether it’s your closet or your Outlook inbox, don’t let clutter run your life. Use the fresh start of the new year to learn more about the Outlook app and Office 365 here‬

Whether it’s your closet or your Outlook inbox, don’t let clutter run your life. Use the fresh start of the new year to learn more about the Outlook app and Office 365

Try Office 365 to get the new Office 2016 apps!

Office-365-30-day-trial

Use OneDrive to fetch files not saved in your OneDrive folder

 

onedrive-managed-solution

You're no longer tied to the OneDrive folder -- you can grab files from any folder on your PC.

As Written by: Sarah Jacobsson Purewal on: cnet.com
Face it -- cloud storage services have made our lives way more convenient. There's nothing quite like being able to save a file in a folder and then instantly have access to that file from a completely different computer.
But what if you forget to save an important file in your cloud storage folder?
Well, if you're a OneDrive user, you can now use OneDrive to "fetch" files that aren't saved in your OneDrive folder -- all you have to do is make sure the computer you want to grab a file from is turned on and connected to the Internet.
This feature works in Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10, but is not supported in Windows 8.1 -- Windows 8.1 computers will be able to fetch files from other computers, but other computers will not be able to fetch files from a Windows 8.1 computer.

Set up fetching

Before you can use the fetch feature, you'll need to set it up. To do this, you will need to have OneDrive installed on your PC.
1. Right-click the OneDrive icon in your system tray and click Settings
2. A window will pop up. Under the Settings tab, check the box next to Let me use OneDrive to fetch any of my files on this PC.
3. Click OK.

Fetch files

Once you've set up fetching on a computer, you can access all of the files on that computer -- whether they're saved in your OneDrive folder or not -- from your OneDrive account. Here's how to do that:
1. Make sure the PC you want to access is turned on and connected to the Internet.
2. Open up a Web browser and log in to OneDrive. You can only access files from a Web browser -- not from the desktop application.
3. In your OneDrive account, you should see a section on the left side labeled PCs. Here, you will see all of the PCs that are associated with your OneDrive account. Click the name of the PC you want to access.
4. If this is the first time you're accessing this PC, you'll see a security check. In order to prove you have access to this PC, you must sign in with a security code. Click Sign in with a security code to receive a security code via text message or email. Once you get your code, enter it and click Submit.
5. You will now see all of the files on the connected PC -- not just the files in your OneDrive.

Brilliant ways to use OneNote in education!

Pandora opens up pathways to teamwork and productivity using the new Office

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

Pandora opens up pathways to teamwork and productivity using the new Office

pandora managed solution
As written by: Phillip R. Kennedy for blogs.office.com
At Pandora, our goal is to design and sell signature jewelry that delights the women who wear it. Our pieces are sold in more than 9,500 stores in over 90 countries; sometimes our end customers shop at our corporate-owned stores or franchises, while others seek out Pandora jewelry at other retailers. As a company, Pandora is growing—by leaps and bounds, which is a testament to the beauty and quality of the products we make. To smooth the way, we’ve taken a fresh look at how we operate. It isn’t enough anymore for our different offices to use whatever supplies, processes and technologies they have at hand. Instead, we need to grow as a single cohesive organization, putting the right support in place for our workforce so that employees worldwide stay efficient and effective in their daily work lives.
Our efforts to help employees design and market our jewelry include providing the latest technology solutions companywide. We’re using some of our new solutions to help us make sweeping changes to the way we interact with our franchisees and to transform the shopping experience for our customers. Other technology upgrades are all about incremental efficiencies.
We adopted Microsoft Office 365 a while back and find ourselves constantly benefitting from the continuing innovations that Microsoft adds. For example, we recently gave Microsoft Office 2016 a try so we could take advantage of lots of time-savers. Our geographically dispersed employees have already become enthusiastic users of the new Office Groups features, which give them an easy, organized way to share conversations, calendars and notebooks. Office Groups are easy for anyone to create, and they’re particularly effective when used in conjunction with Microsoft Outlook, because everything related to a team project shows up right within Outlook, which is where I spend most of my day.
It’s even more powerful when we add in Microsoft OneNote, which may be the best app ever developed. Having a single place to put anything you think of (notes, images, jewelry design sketches, production schedules, logistical information), making it searchable, and being able to access it from any device and share access with others is pretty amazing. In fact, one of our executives used to be a strictly paper guy. He had special notebooks that he carried around everywhere. When we showed him OneNote, he immediately switched over completely, and now he uses it for everything, making his notes available to the executive team, who comment on them electronically.
It’s not just our executives who’re making faster decisions and moving the company forward. Pandora employees everywhere now use Skype for Business for instant messaging, telephony, presence and video calls. Our ability to interact visually during conference calls makes a huge difference to our communication—it’s important to be able to see facial expressions and reactions so we know if we’re connecting and understanding one another, which is especially critical because it helps bring together our teams around the world. We share desktops during these calls, which improves the teamwork because we can share our work, whether it’s a design for a new bracelet, a marketing campaign or an IT schematic. Plus, we’re saving on long-distance costs and reducing travel expenses. I’m convinced that we wouldn’t be as successful operating as a unified global company if our distributed teams couldn’t collaborate using capabilities like Office Groups and Skype for Business Online.
Employees use simplified sharing features to help keep track of document versions and work faster. For example, when I want to send out a document for review, I use cloud-based attachments, which means that my colleagues receive a link to the document in Microsoft OneDrive for Business. They don’t have copies of project plans or spreadsheets cluttering up their Inboxes. And when they click on the link, it takes them to the latest version of my document, so I can keep modifying the document even after I send the email.
I also appreciate the cross-platform functionality, touch capabilities and digital ink, because I can stay productive even when I don’t have a mouse and keyboard. I use a Microsoft Surface Pro 3, a MacBook Pro and an iPad. Office 2016 provides a seamless experience as I edit, save and share documents on any device.
We’re getting so much value from Office 365 and the new Office 2016 suite, but I feel like we’ve only scratched the surface of what it can do for us. Already, we’re connecting teams, streamlining processes for increased productivity, and working more efficiently from everywhere across a range of devices. But I’m looking forward to exploring Sway for more polished reports and presentations and Outlook Clutter to help keep me focused and prioritize my email. With so many ways to save time and gain insight, we’re better able to keep pace with the demands of our growing business. That’s good news for jewelry lovers everywhere!
Read customer success stories to learn how Managed Solution helps businesses implement technology productivity solutions.
Try Office 365
Office-365-30-day-trial

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]